Month 7

This month has been filled with achievements. Goals that your dad and I put into place after your last visit to the pediatrician. You still got to have fun, just with a little added "oomph." Since you enjoy walking so much, I think these milestones weren't a thought in your head because, hey, you can walk with mommy and daddy's help and that's much faster. Unfortunately, your parents are starting to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Therefore, you were going to acquire these skills.

About 2 weeks after your visit to the pediatrician we had you lying on the floor and I could have sworn you moved from point A to point M by doing a 360 roll. There was no way you could have wiggled your body that distance. The trouble was that every time we watched you attempt to roll from your back to your front, you'd go half the distance then think "This is good enough" and flop back onto your back. Yet, when we weren't looking, you were either just finishing a roll, already on your tummy or halfway across the floor. It wasn't until later in the day when I saw you actually roll from your back to front. Boy oh boy did you receive some well deserved praise. It also made me wonder whether you already knew how to do trick and was just holding out because you took to it pretty easily. The milestone was reached in less than one day's time. I wonder if you just set a world record.

The next milestone we wanted you to reach was the ability to sit up unsupported. Again, because you decided walking trumps all other skills, you pretty much resisted sitting. Seriously. We would try and get you to sit, but you would arc your body and stiffen your legs so the only alternative was to have you stand. You still do this to us, but once in a while give in to appease our needs. This skill is taking a little longer to master, but you're slowly getting there. I think you now are starting to see how much fun it can be to sit up and play. This allows you to watch the world from the living room window, watch Ollie lick his paw for the ump-teenth time, and scan the room for your next potential toy. Unfortunately, you haven't realized that if you lean back you'll whack your head onto the floor. Dad believes the more times you do fall back the less likely you'll do it in the future. I haven't seen that play out yet. So for now, I like to place a pillow or my leg behind you so that you don't have to dent your head any further.

One milestone that we hadn't planned on happening was the appearance of your first tooth. The pediatrician told us that wouldn't happen until you were at least 8 months old, but she was WRONG! On the bright side, you aren't suffering too badly from the tooth coming through the gum -- meaning you aren't crying 24/7. On the not-so-bright side, your sleeping habits are horrid. I think what's happening is that once you have finally relaxed -- ie: sleeping -- you start to feel the pain of the tooth coming in and therefore begin to fuss and fuss and FUSS some more. So, your 8-10 hour stretches of sleep have gone back to 3-4 hours and mom isn't very happy about this. No. Not one bit. Just when I thought I started to get ahead on sleep deprivation, teething threw me a big curve ball and now I'm back to trying to control my anger from lack of sleep. Yay!! Fun. Fun.

As for the tooth, it's very cute. That is until you take one of our fingers and bite down. Then that tooth isn't quite so cute.

You also celebrated your first Christmas and Chanukah. Yes, Chanukah. Thanks to your Aunt Robin, we had Chanukah dinner at her place on Christmas Eve, which included the reading from her prayer book and lighting of the candles. You couldn't partake in the food, but that will come next year. We also found out that no matter how tired you are, if there is a party happening you must be involved. Similar to Ollie. And as we found out recently, similar to your dad's behaviour when he was a babe. Yaaaaay! More fun. This really doesn't help when you're already cranky from teething. In a way I can't wait for the holiday season to be over.

Getting back to Christmas, as we expected you found more joy in eating the gift wrap and sucking on the boxes. That was fine because I love opening gifts and being that 98% of the gifts under the tree were for you, I got to pretend they were for me and opened most of them. You received quite a stack of toys to help in your development. I'm sure in another month they will begin making sense. Right now, they're just big and small teething rings.

I have to say that your stranger anxiety has worsened a bit. You weren't very happy seeing your uncle and aunt and remained a fuss-bucket throughout their stay. I am going to rationalize a bit, thinking that it's all a side effect of your crazy sleep schedule. Please let this be a short phase, because it is also affecting our outings together. Like when strangers compliment you on your cuteness, I can feel you tense up and get into the I'm-so-going-to-wail mode. I've managed to keep you calm most of the time, but there are a few instances where the strangers actually touched you and you were having none of that. I still wince when I go to the dry cleaners. Someday you'll be able to appreciate their cooing over you.

When you aren't crying, you are beginning to put syllables together to make some good baby bambling. It's down right adorable when you use this while playing, but lately you've taken to using these words when you want to complain and b*tch about whatever is displeasing you at the moment. And the race is on... dad tries to get you to say "da-da" and I try to get you to say "mamma". I have a feeling we're both going to lose to "Ollie". Then Ollie's ears will perk up, he'll look at us like "Crap. Did she say what I think she said?", get all emo and attempt to jump the back yard fence.

Disgusted

This morning I'm watching BBC America and it's commercial time. Normally I try an tune them out, but one caught my attention: the Silver Sonic hearing aid.

Initially I had to laugh. The hearing aid is designed to look like a blue tooth headset. I would think that if you have to use a hearing aid, you would want to conceal it rather than announce to the world that you have trouble hearing. Besides, if you had to wear one, why would you want to look like your carrying on a conversation with yourself ALL. DAY. LONG!

The giggles quickly subsided when the company promoted the device as being so powerful you can hear a pin drop across the room. Then used some of the following examples:

Now you can hear the conversations taking place across the street.

Did you always wonder what people were saying about you at a party?

WTF? So the company is actually promoting eavesdropping and mistrust. I thought the purpose of a hearing aid was to hear sounds that you want and should hear --- not conversations that do not include you. Seriously, what is going on with our society.

Warms the Heart

Yesterday morning Claire was obviously tired and needed her morning nap. I tried several times to get her down, only to hear her rip the binkie from her mouth and begin fake-crying as I left the room. Oh that fake-cry brings back memories from my own childhood. I remember very distinctly fake-crying in order to get dad's attention, or something I wanted. I'm guessing hubby didn't have the fake-cry because he can't tell the difference between fake-cry and real-cry. And after roughly 30 seconds of fake-cry, he gives in and I happily pass on the title of "sucker" to him. Anyway, seeing that Claire was having nothing to do with napping, I tried a different approach.

We went into the living room and I placed her down on the ottoman, with me right beside her (at this point I so badly wanted her to nap because I was exhausted and I had no idea why). We played "high-five", signed the alphabet, sung songs... our usual. Then she started turning onto her side to look into my face, where she proceeded to grab my nose, mouth and occasionally an eye, which I luckily closed before she was able to grab my eyeball. This went back and forth for a few spells, until she did one final turn, looked me directly in the eyes, placed her hand on my cheek and went to sleep.

1...2...3... No eye peeping to check if I'm still there. ...4...5... Holy naps! She's actually sleeping.

Before I did my internal dance of joy, I just laid there there watching her sleep. My throat tightened and heart fluttered. Too precious. I didn't want to move her, but knew I had too--primarily for safety reasons. Of course, later that night, she made up for that sweet moment by becoming screeching cat on speed. Ahhh... babies.